5/2/15

Today is
April 20, 2015 our regular Monday night class. We’re going to discuss a little
bit of the Origin of Chan as it relates to meditation. But first, I wanted to
give you something to ponder on and this is kind of a very classic Chan story.

There was a young monk who wanted
to learn about Chan but the monk already was a bit accomplished in terms of
things that he had done. So he was visiting with this master and the master was
seated with him and they were going to have some tea. The young monk was busy
at listing what he had done up to that point and what his understanding was. The
old monk poured the tea up to the point where the tea overflowed in the cup.

The young monk said, “Master,
can't you see you’re overflowing the tea in the cup?”

And the Master said, “It’s just
like you. How can I put anything into you? You already have everything.”

Now
that's a very classic story. How many of you have heard that story before?
Probably everybody’s heard that before but what does it mean? Here comes the
Chan trick… (Laughs…) Think about this.

Student:
I thought [when I first read it] the young monk who brought this up was so full
of what he knew. That’s what the Master was saying, “How can I teach you anything
unless you decide to leave all these up behind you?” You think you know
everything and therefore your cup is already full. Your mind isn’t going to
absorb anything new because he saw that it’s so full of “look what I can do?”

Gilbert:
Anything more?

Another
student: In addition to what Valerie said, the young monk thinks he knows or
heard everything, but the point that he’s missing is that you have to have a
beginner’s mind in order to learn about Chan.

Gilbert:
Would that mind be able to absorb what the master was teaching?

Same
student: As long as his cup is full, he cannot put anymore tea into the cup,
but if the cup is empty, yes.

Another
student: The master didn’t have anything to teach. It was just an expedient
means that he used to illustrate that. Your cup being full can be interpreted
in two ways: one way was like what Valerie and Rick said it. The other way was
to say “You already have Buddha-nature” so your cup is already full and you
didn’t realize it yet.

Gilbert:
Do you really think that's what he was saying, that his cup was full and he
already had it? Why would the master fill it up to the top? There’s a demonstration
of the inconceivable in the Master’s actions.

Another
student: My thing was you have to be empty to be in Chan and not full. It’s the
emptiness there; you don’t want to keep adding things. You want to get rid of
your attachments. You want to get rid of those lessons and live “empty.” You
don’t want anything in your cup. You need empty in your cup.

Back to previous
student: Empty doesn’t mean the empty cup. It’s realizing the emptiness of all
phenomena but phenomena can still be there.

Back to
the previous student: The phenomena can still be there but what he’s trying to
get is he’s trying to add attachments of knowledge instead of wisdom.

Gilbert:
And what is the error of the young monk? Was the old monk in error by
overfilling the cup? There is the key right there. Evidently, the young monk
thought that way. What was his crime?

Another
student: Trying to attain something and believing that you can get enlightened.
Trying that if you can grab and put it in and you will achieve and attain and
get it, but it’s not that way. That’s what the teacher was saying when he
overfilled the cup – there’s no room for what you want in there.

Gilbert:
He was pointing directly at the absolute reality of everything in terms of this.
What did the tea represent?

Another
student: Everything.

Gilbert:
Everything?

Student:
Everything – phenomena and knowledge and learning.

Gilbert: What did the teacup represent? Think
about it.

Back to
previous student: Maybe the conscious mind that wants to hold on to something; that’s
the function of the conscious mind. Rid of it and you will find your real mind
as well. He was filling it with mind but mind doesn’t speak in consciousness so
that’s why it was overflowing.

Gilbert:
That’s right. The tea inside the teapot was everything. So when the master filled
his cup and overflowed it, he was demonstrating what cannot be said by words - that
mind is everywhere and that there's no way that it can fit into the
consciousness. The consciousness cannot hold it; it’s just a tiny little
teacup. It too is just in that way. It is actually a very deep and profound
story that people kind of just think “Well your cup is full” but it is much
deeper than that.

Student: And
what is the point of the story? I read this more than a couple of times with
different interpretations. What is the point of the story where he said “Tell
me what you know?” And the young monk goes on and on and on about what he
knows. What’s his point?

Gilbert:
The point is I won’t have a lecture without this story. What does the story
mean? The story means that one doesn’t cling to what they know; they let it go.
But the idea is much deeper than that because it's not that I hold on to
something and if I cling to it I’ll never have a realization or I'll never
become enlightened. The “you” is not separate from mind itself. It’s not that
anything more could be added to it. That would short-change the value of the
story. But it is the impossibility that anything could be added. Even if the
cup was empty and you try to fill it up, it would still continue to overflow.

Student: The
way that this story was traditionally interpreted is “you have to have an empty
cup.” The tone is chastising; it doesn’t reflect the fact that the monk has
Buddha-nature already. I appreciate your interpretation of it.

Gilbert:
What is it better for the young monk to have that the master was demonstrating?

Student:
No cup.

Gilbert:
No cup?

Student:
So he would not try to put the uncontainable in the container.

Gilbert:
But yet in that container, the uncontainable is there.

Student:
Already there.

Gilbert:
So what is it that the master was demonstrating?

Student:
The same thing that Paloma said that he was trying to get his consciousness
enlightened. He was trying to turn mind into consciousness.

Gilbert:
Yes, so he was very foolish. So what the master did was he simply provided him
with the Right View. But if we look at it, we can get trapped with even this
little Zen story thinking “I'm so smart; I'm not going to be like him. I'm
going to come with an empty cup.” But the cup, whether it's full or not full,
is empty. That’s the Right View.

Student:
And as long as you're trying to do something, you’re missing the ultimate
truth.

Gilbert:
Yet we have to practice. Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Chan, said that we can enter by way of principle, or
practice, or both. We don't deny the principle but what’s important, what's
the main point of Chan is that the practice is there as well. And that's very
important. The practice is there with the Right View and we use that Right View
until that Right View is realized.

There is
the parable of the raft, another very famous one where the Buddha was saying
about the practice; that the study, the practice is like
a raft. And that you go from one side to the other side and when you get to the
other side, you don't need to carry the raft around with you.

It is
funny because I had read this article and it’s heavily weighted towards Theravada
in which the person was saying “Well you know, the Mahayanas have taken that and
they have changed the meaning of it” - by saying that there's no practice,
there's no principle, and that there's nothing there, and using that to
establish this Mahayana emptiness. Yes, we do do that! And he was absolutely
right but the thing was he was so baffled by the idea of mind, and no-mind, and
just-mind and the Middle Way. He could not follow that because he was trying to
hold on to it and his error was trying to hold onto it as an intellectual
supporting the Theravada viewpoint.

But by
doing that, he actually minimized the Theravada viewpoint from where I’m sure
it really is beyond that. But because of his scholastic application to it, he
lost the real [you could say] the essence of it, which is what Chan does and
looks at it and says “this is the essence of the practice.” This is when we
meditate, we know, it’s not a full cup, not an empty cup, not thoughts, not no-thoughts.
If I’m sitting there thinking “I have no thoughts, I’m engaged in emptiness,” that's
not the Middle Way. But when we
think “just this thought,” not bad!
We don't have to say anything. We don't have to make this person better, or add
more to his cup, or empty his cup to add more tea. That’s foolishness! It would
not get him anywhere. He would just be going, like on the raft - back and forth,
back and forth never realizing to get off because the realization was not there
for him.

So when
we practice, we let go of things but we let go of them in accordance with the Right
View. And that practice of the principle enables us to when we sit, to sit in a
quiet state, without thinking that the mind is not in this quiet state [a dead
state] but it's a very dynamic state. So in the idea of the principle of the
raft, we see it and we say “It’s not in the words.” It is just simply something
that we use. And as a result of that letting go in this way, we’re able to have
a direct realization.

The problem
with this one particular intellectual writer was that it was apparent that he has
not had a realization or anything that came close to it. The words to him are
what he uses as a shield and his sword. But when you come from a different
viewpoint of the direct realization, those things disappear. That’s what [in
terms of the way of looking at it] all the debates from the Yogacara School, to
the Madhyamaca School, to the Abhidharma School, all of them working through
and funneling all of that, that came into Chan. And working through Taoism,
Confucianism and the debates with them being refined by Huayan School and
Tientai School, at that point when those things all came together, what was
left was “This is what we come up with, to this ultimate truth” - and that is “just
mind.” And if you say “just mind,” one might say “no mind” so that one isn’t
even attached to that notion of that word “mind.” But when we talk about this,
we don’t talk about this individual mind. We talk about there is consciousness
and then there's mind.

It’s a very
interesting thing that the Buddha never said there was no soul, but he didn't
say there was. That is the Middle Way in terms of looking at it and he just
stressed more of the Right View of looking at things very clearly. And when you
see things very clearly, it enables one to practice in the proper way. If one
holds onto the words, then no matter how good the words are, they can corrupt.
There is actually in the Nikayas a passage and where he is criticizing one of
his monks for saying that he understood the fundamental principles of the
Buddha and telling him “This is not the Way. You cannot do that and you cannot
teach in this way in terms of the understanding.”

So when
we look at the practice, it's a very interesting one because of the fact that
there are times (and I’ve been reading quite a bit right now about the Buddha’s
history), and there are writers and critics that will say “This is not what the
Buddha taught.” Actually there's a book called “What the Buddha Taught” which is
written by a Theravada but in fact it is; it's all there. It's in the Nikayas
or what we call the Nigamas; it's there [all these] and what is supremely
ironic about all of this is that how did
the Buddha become enlightened? How did he reach liberation?

Student: Through meditation.

Gilbert:
Yes, it wasn't through starving himself, right? Nor he didn’t take a shower, didn't
cut his hair, ate roots? He did all sorts of stuff as an ascetic but it didn't
help him. Studying didn't help him. All those things, everything he did, he was
quite serious; much much better than any of us here; a hundred thousand times
better than any of us and yet, he could not go through. It was only through meditation;
and somebody’s going to tell me that Chan is not Buddhism, or Chan is not what
the Buddha taught, when the Buddha’s own realization came from sitting and
meditation? This is how we do it.

Student:
He was able to use the raft and put it down on the other shore. Without him
trying to do the ascetic ways and finding that that was not the right way but
only through meditation, that’s why I come to your class because I think that’s
the raft. But I do get off once in a while.

Gilbert:
Your raft has turned into a big giant Metrolink bus that takes people back and forth.
(Laughs…) So I wouldn't worry about that part of it.

But the
idea here is that that when we look at Chan, it’s something that is extremely
applicable in terms of Buddhism and how to use it. And if we say that this is
not the Way, I mean everyone uses meditation to a certain degree but in Chan
Buddhism, we really emphasize that in terms of the way to do it. But it’s not
necessarily that if you sit you get enlightened but utilizing that precious
time to be able to be in a controlled environment [like the Buddha was]. He was
in a controlled environment; just sitting under the tree. He didn’t want to
eat, didn’t want to go to the bathroom; he didn’t do anything else. He just crossed
his legs and said “I’m going to sit here.” And all sorts of stuff happened to
him. It wasn't like he sat there and all of a sudden he reached this Nirvana. It took him quite
a while to work through it.

And we
sit here and I always think about that because when you sit and you get
frustrated because you can't stop your thinking and you think “how long was he
sitting underneath there?” It was a long time. You know sometimes I remember
being at a retreat saying “I’m not going to get up until I get enlightened.”
Such foolishness!!! And I would sit there you know like maybe three sitting
periods, “Fine, maybe everybody's gone. What the heck!” And I gave in to Mara’s
armies or whatever at that time.

But the
Buddha, through his conviction wanted to solve the problem. At this point, the
idea of delivering sentient being wasn't quite there yet although the Buddha at
that time was referred to [even by Theravadas] as a Bodhisattva.
The notion of a Bodhisattva was one referred to the Buddha. When you look at it
in terms of a math thing and say “The Buddha equals a Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva
is us,” then we are one and the same using the Buddha-mind. There is no
difference. But people would go, “But you changed it; you changed it all. You
changed the tune. You added Bodhisattvas to the mix!” Why not? We’re supposed
to follow the Buddhas in study, follow them in their practice. We should not be
worried about that. We should just use the Right View. And when we use the
Right View, we can practice in a proper way. And when it happens in that way,
things just happen naturally.

I remember one retreat where Master Sheng Yen called
me in. There was Gou Yuan Fashi in there and at that time was the Abbott of the
Dharma Drum Retreat Center and they asked me how my practice was. And I just
simply said like, “If you don't deliver me before I deliver you, I will deliver
you.” And that was it; that was all that needed to be said. And that just came
out naturally from the idea of a Bodhi heart. This vow to deliver others before one’s self is this initial generation
of the Bodhi-heart of a Bodhisattva. And that is a key element in terms of
our practice and that is a product from that insight one can get through the
meditation. There's kind of a sincerity there in terms of how one begins to
look at it and a bit of an urgency or a prompting with respect to the finite
number of breaths one has; that one will want to utilize those breaths to be
able to set others on the Bodhi paths. This all comes from the meditation.

It’s an interesting
thing because I've been reading on this. It’s challenging and this particular
person’s presentation was a presentation of fine papers, a big Buddhist
conclave. He was actually supporting Chan meditation by what he was saying and
he was citing the Buddha himself and I've been reading it and I was saying,
“This is good!” because this is what this means. And we look at it and we begin
to understand why we meditate. What’s good for the Buddha is good for us. But
we don't sit there and meditate with a full cup, and we don't meditate with an
empty cup; we don't meditate with any cup at all. We just let that all go. We
just follow the method.

One thing
about the mind is that it’s already perfected. All we have to do is just simply
leave it alone; not swirl up the dust, not cloud it over. Even the Buddha was
talking about that in one parable of the “people mistaking the clouds in the
sky for the sky,” and because of that they could not see clearly; it was darkened.
But when we see neither clouds, neither sky; just clouds, just sky; clouds, no
sky; sky, no clouds, this is like a tetralemma. And we leave
it alone; we simply leave it alone. You have a question? Go ahead.

Student:
When I think of the Buddha sitting and meditating, I do not generally picturing
him as just cutting loose all thoughts. I see him as really being intent and
thinking about trying to come to the reality of “what is” and it seems like a very
purposeful meditation rather than just “don’t attach to anything” when you sit
on your cushion.

Gilbert:
It's kind of interesting thing because I think it would be counterintuitive for
us to not have a discussion. But on the other hand, that kind of a theoretical
or conceptual type of approach would not produce the same results - that simply
just allowing the mind to come to a halt. When I say “allowing the mind,” it becomes
very difficult. I should have said “allowing the consciousness” to come to a halt
and just to finally rest in this present moment where it's no longer generating
thoughts.

But in
that, there's this contemplation. Contemplation
is without words. It just simply is the
reflection of mind as it works. Then as it does that, then there is what
comes in which we recall insight. That
insight comes not from a discussion in the mind but simply from a realization
that this is the way it is. The mind comes to this point where when I say comes
to halt, it may be the wrong way to say it because it doesn't really come to a
halt. It really comes to a point where it is radiating, absolutely radiating
and radiating everything, and that truth is within that radiation. That truth
is there and seeing clearly how things are. In this way, to talk about it in
words is worthless but that gets to the problem of where do we go with all of
these.

And the
idea is that you don't go anywhere. You just stay there; you stay there and you
don't reap this green fruit. What you do is you allow yourself to stay with the method, stay with the method
and let the mind reveal itself. In a non-nonverbal way the mind essentially,
through its revelation of what it is, brings everything to a conclusion where
the contradictions of mind and no-mind are resolved. They don't appear to be a
contradiction anymore. There's that kind of an experience that has nothing to
do with the self. It isn't necessary nothing to do with consciousness, it’s
just that consciousness [at that point] and mind are melded together. They're
not producing a life in being, or personality, not producing fear, craving,
desire, all those things. And what it does is it douses that last citadel of
ignorance. It douses it out; extinguishes it. In fact that's what they call
Nirvana isn’t it in extinguishing the flame? And it's that flame, we talked
about it before remember the fancy word I gave it for fundamental ignorance?

Student:
Nescience entrenchment.

Gilbert:
Nescience entrenchment; that was from the Lion’s Roar of Queen Shrimala’s
Sutra. It is that point where the Buddha reached that doused it. When he doused
it, it wasn't like one douses a campfire and then it's all dark. Quite to the
contrary, what it did was the reverse. So it’s this counterintuitive way in
terms of looking at it and when these flames of passion were doused, at that
point it was clear what mind was and the capabilities and potentialities of mind
are all self-evident within mind. It says if you had access to this little
library like this, and all of a sudden, boom!!! Mind is the library. In this
kind of a way is how we approach our meditation.

If we
approach it from the viewpoint that you are going to arrive at a resolution to
it, it will not work. But if you approach it from “just let go,” you're letting
go essentially of everything except the method. When you let go of everything
except the method, mind by itself will begin to radiate. Everything in the mind
will be extremely clear. The potentiality of thoughts, and thousands and
thousands of thought bubble will be self-evident in the mind and beyond that. But
in this way, we have to discard the idea that there's something in the cup that
is going to get us there. We take the tea and we function with the tea but
we’re cognizant that we cannot put so much in that cup no matter how much it would
be able to hold everything that's in the teapot.

So this
is how we look at things and when we meditate, we meditate in this way. Did
that get close to answering your question a little bit?

Student:
It still seems to me that the Buddha had a really strong intent of what he
wanted when he sat down to meditate and that we wasn’t going to get up until he
had the answers to his questions.

Gilbert:
There’s no doubt about that in terms of the Virya – energy. I talked about that
many times that you have to have this strong energy and purposefulness to do
that. But remember that along with that, you have to have Right View. The Right
View would keep him from producing thought at that point. So when you have that
then the wisdom will come up and that wisdom will become perfected wisdom. It’s
the wisdom that it has experienced; that he’s using the parable of the “other shore”
that there's no other shore. But it’s this experience that has no abode.

Imagine your
mind that can be everywhere but yet stable; (pretty cool!!!) that knows things
without saying “I know anything.” That is able to see things very very clearly.
That’s the practice of Chan. Little by little we become better at it. It
doesn’t mean that we are really great at it, but it’s something that comes. The
more we practice, the more that we come to these kinds of things. And this
helps us in terms of our daily lives. Will we get enlightened in this lifetime?
Who knows? But we won't if we don't practice, and we won’t if we don't practice
in the right way.

One of the
things that I feel very sad about is when I run into people who have been
practicing consciousness for years. It's really something that is lamentable
because they have been practicing for years and just haven’t run into a well-knowing
adviser. To me this is the part that is the most important in terms of
presenting a lecture, is to make sure people have a clear Right View as to what
they're doing when they are sitting on that cushion. That makes all the
difference in the world when you practice in this way.

Okay, I
went way off my lecture. (Laughs…) Actually with all of that, I seemed to have covered
most of the points. One of the points I want to talk about, and I’ve talked
about it here in terms of what was modified a little bit. We talked about the
idea of a Bodhisattva was this concept of Karuna. We've
talked about Metta
before; Metta is this loving-kindness and a wanting to spread this kind of a
loving kindness to people. But Karuna
goes further than that. In the Theravada, it doesn't quite go as far but in the
Mahayana, it is this idea of having a great interest in the termination of the
suffering of sentient beings for the purpose of them arriving at their
liberation. In between that, there’s just this great interest in the suffering
of others and wanting to remove that suffering. Karuna then as a notion came up
and became very synonymous with the idea of the Buddha-nature and this idea
that a bodhisattva has this and this is a product of the practice. A product of
a Bodhisattva is this Karuna that one uses and Karuna also reflects the Buddha-nature
and that everything has with Buddha-nature.

Now there
are critics even of that and they talk about it in terms of referring to the
idea of the Buddha-nature or the Tathagatagarbha, as essentialism. I don’t know
if anybody knows what that word is – essentialism. This is one of this philosophical
stuff that I run into all the time now. Essentialism is a view
that, for any specific entity (such as an animal, a group of people, physical
object, a concept), there is a set of attributes which are necessary to its identify
and function.

Now I
will read what non-essentialism is -
which states that, for any given entity, there are no specific traits which
entities of that kind must possess. So in this idea I have another Chan trick
question for you. Is Chan, with the idea of a Buddha-nature, essentialism or is
it non-essentialism? Again non-essentialism is that for any given kind of entity
there are no specific traits which entities of that kind possess and the other
one there are specific traits. Which does Chan fall into?

Gilbert:
But the idea in terms of this is that it's the Middle Way.
And that's the problem, that somebody outside of the system looking at it and
calling it “It is this.” It's a bird; no it’s a dog. And we look at things and
say, “No, it’s a birddog!” But it's not really a birddog because it doesn't
have wings and it can be averted because it doesn’t have four legs. There goes
your tetralemma. Do you see what I’m saying? That’s conceptualization. But in
Buddhism, it neither negates nor accepts it. It just is. That is the Suchness Doctrine
of Mahayana, is that one comes to this suchness and that’s the way it is.

And when
you sit, that is just what happens because that’s the way it is. You don't need
words; “How was it?” No, that's not going to help you. Tell me how your
realization was; did you see angels? Did you see lights? Did you see this, did
you see that? What a bunch of garbage! Just
sit! Don’t worry about that stuff. And don’t try to mimic anything or you
end up being a bird or a dog or whatever, or caught up in the tetralemma, or
the Master is going to hit you four times. (Laughs…)

The
reason I point this out is because these are the things that are out there in
terms of people looking doctrinally at it. There was this Japanese Master who
goes, “Aw, essentialism; nothing but essentialism!!!” No, because it doesn’t
fit in essentialism, nor does it fit in non-essentialism. We just see that as
our doctrine of suchness but it’s difficult because it's hard to wrap a doctrinal thesis around something you can't write
about.

Student:
I have a doctrinal question. The Madhyamaca, the emptiness, the Tathagatagarbha
was kind of a clarification on top of that. It’s not that extreme and the
suchness, do you think is the middle between emptiness and Tathagatagarbha?

Gilbert:
Yes, it’s the middle without there being a middle. It’s just the way it is. It's
not inconsistent with the Theravada where they say “What things are; how things
are.” It’s the same suchness. It’s just that if one wants to make an argument about
it you can make an argument. But ultimately, just like Shifu had pointed out,
was that we still follow the same path. And what's very important is that we
follow the Laws
of Dependent Origination, the Nidanas,
and we see things very clearly in terms of that.

The Laws
of Dependent Origination was what the Buddha taught very early on. The very
first one, do you know [anybody] what the very first one is?

Student:
Ignorance.

Gilbert:
Ignorance, and what kind of ignorance?

Student:
Nescience entrenchment.

Gilbert:
Nescience entrenchment; that's where it all got started. And we will go over
these later on because the Nidanas, what
is another name for them; I mean a Sanskrit name that embodies it?

Gilbert:
Paticca-samuppada; it is just Paticca-samuppada - how things work. It's just a
little bit more detailed diagram of how it works but if one understands Paticca-samuppada
– causes and conditions never fail, that’s it! And you just keep playing that; causes
and conditions never fail, causes and conditions never fail, causes and conditions
never fail.

Student:
That causes and conditions never fail; that that is the nature of mind, aren’t
you making an essentialist statement?

Gilbert:
It’s a very funny thing because the person who was a critic of Chan Buddhism,
this one particular Japanese scholar said that that kind of thinking was not Paticca-samuppada,
which is non-essential. But it isn’t because in causes and conditions never
fail, we aren’t saying that the causes and conditions exist. We are just saying
that they have this appearance; they give rise to these things. But inherent
within them is this emptiness which pervades everything, which if you could say
if there's essential, then the emptiness would negate that there is something
that is connected with and then the reality, the constant changing of that
would keep them from being essential. So it’s kind of an interesting point. (I
think I’ve stirred up the whole Hornets nest there).

Student:
Then emptiness itself is essential.

Gilbert:
If you hold onto that, you’ll hold onto it for many many lifetimes.

Another
student (in the background): It’s the other way.

Student:
I’m trying to play the devil’s advocate here.

Gilbert:
It will not work. That cannot work.

Student:
You are describing the states of both suchness and emptiness, which I
understand the use of the conjunctive there is troublesome from the Chan
perspective. But if one is to bring in an essentialist criticism, it would be
that the condition you are describing, that mind, as being both and neither
suchness and emptiness, that could be described as essential. It turtles all
the way down.

Gilbert:
If you see it in that way, essentially you are locked in a scholastic argument.
But it can’t be that way for the reasons of why I was teaching Sentha the
tetralemma. And when one begins to see it that way, there's a negation of that
kind of essentialist viewpoint. The only way you could say it's essential is
because I say it's essential, and that negates the fact that we’re saying that
the idea of saying essential is emptiness itself. But in this emptiness there's
an impermanence to it because at one time or at one point, maybe that essentialist
idea that you have in your mind, whether you're using as the devil's advocate
or however you’re using it will be gone. So there's no permanency to it; there's
that ultimate emptiness to that. So you could never say that was a fundamental
principle.

Student:
The thing is that all of these things are words that are either trying to
describe an experience or trying to induce an experience. So if you take it as
words trying to induce an experience, the emptiness shakes you off free of
attachments. Tathagatagarbha, the Buddha-nature shakes you off of your
attachment to emptiness, and the suchness shakes you off of your attachments to
both emptiness and Tathagatagarbha or Buddha-nature. So these are pointing
words.

Student:
Although this may not be an intellectual debate where we are talking of
essentialism or non-essentialism, that itself again is saying something
meaningful about the state of mind. And I guess the question is “Is there
anything necessary to that dialog? Is there anything essential to that dialog?
Is there a “given” that we can work from there?”

Another
student: All four of those views depend on how you set up your philosophical
argument. They are all relevant and not essentially reality because of the
dualism of language and dualism of thoughts; whereas if you are bound to
thoughts and language, you don’t really perceive reality.

Another
student: Essentialism could be the raft that you use to get to the other shore but
once you get to the other shore, Chan [using the Right View] becomes the path. So
you use Paticca-samuppada [causes and conditions never fail] and when you are a
Bodhicitta on the path, you don’t carry that raft anymore once you start that
walk on the path.

Previous
student: I’m on board with raft is raft, and mind as raft is a raft, and mind
as cup is a cup, and mind as cup holds this tea. That’s what it does. The
essentialist question is mind as mind, is there something it must do?

Gilbert:
There's nothing… that's why the ancients looked at it and said “This Middle Way, it’s neither real nor unreal.”
That way one cannot say this is essentialism because if you say this is essentialism,
then one will say “We never said it was essentialism.” We didn’t say that there
was anybody there. Quite to the contrary, they negate the idea of a life in being,
a personality, or an ego. But on the other hand when one comes to a realization,
without calling it mind, mind is just mind. It is how things work. It's like
the ocean and then we say “That drop is essential.” Well it's essential to the
ocean because it needs to be there in order for the ocean to be an ocean but
it's not really separate from the ocean. So when we see things in this way, it
takes it out of the context of any kind of conceptualization. Essentialism is a
tool that a philosopher uses to try to point at things and say on this argument
that you're an essentialist; (“Oh my God!”) or you know, you’re non-essentialist.

But the
idea is that when we discard all that, when we let that go, what is that? What
is that? And that is what we do when we sit to meditate, is we use certain
principles as a lantern or as a raft like the Buddha said. But that is let go
once it gives you that momentum to start moving across. Any kind of parables or
analogies are very poor in terms of talking about Chan but once it's set into
motion, then it is set into motion and it will be self-revealing - to get to
the other shore, you end up right back where you started. The only difference
is that it's clear how it's functioning and the way it functions is causes and conditions
never fail. They are constantly changing but the idea of saying okay there is
this lasting living Buddha. That's why they were talking about “If you should encounter
the Buddha in your practice, kill the Buddha” so people don't get caught up in that.
They don't get caught in the idea of “is” or “is not.”

I appreciate
your comments because your comments are good. They take you right to the point
where all of a sudden all those arguments are exhausted. You have to sit on that
cushion but none of those arguments will help you; either way - for or against.
Ok any other questions, comments? It’s a good class tonight. We’ll take our
break.